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Back on Dorothy’s birthday, I spent the day sharing quotations of hers on Facebook. They came from her fiction, her non-fiction, and, in at least one instance, from her letters. Among these choice bits was the beginning of “The Abominable History of the Man with Copper Fingers” – better known here as her description of the Egotists’ Club:

The Egotists’ Club is one of the most genial places in London. It is a place to which you may go when you want to tell that odd dream you had last night, or to announce what a good dentist you have discovered. You can write letters there if you like, and have the temperament of a Jane Austen, for there is no silence room, and it would be a breach of club manners to appear busy or absorbed when another member addresses you.

Somehow, the idea of announcing one’s dentist, of all things, captured my imagination the most.

In the spirit of sharing one’s humblest joys, one’s most quotidian triumphs, one’s practical delights…here are my joys of late:

– Yesterday I bought a MacBook Pro. Not without trepidation, mind, as I have always been a PC user. But after my beloved Samsung fried, and my far-less-beloved Asus came to have an inoperable wireless card and tracked poorly…well, I basically went without a home computer for a year, using my smartphone instead, and growing steadily more frustrated by my lack of keyboard. The new model glows with promise: the promise that updates will not overwhelm me, that I need not pay a subscription to store my own documents, that I might go forth to join others in sub-creation.

– Not unrelatedly, having obtained the equipment to do it, I have started learning about the nuts and bolts of coding in HTML. My programming brother recommended this course of action to me, and it is perhaps the closest a Muggle gets to reading a book of spells: when you assemble the necessary elements (be they ever so boilerplate) and press “Run,” behold! These curious ciphers and characters LIVE! If you did it properly, anyway.

– I have been getting so much delight from the Ann Arbor District Library Summer Game. But that’s a whole other blog post, it turns out!

– The people around me have reminded me of delightful things. My flatmate reminded me of how delightful Brideshead Revisited is, by preparing a picnic for us to eat on the solstice while reading excerpts of “Et in Arcadia Ego.” Emily reminded me about that most adorable composition tool, Written? Kitten!Katherine and Ike, friends from Hillsdale that I hadn’t seen since 2012, drove through the UP before meeting me in Lansing for lunch and a good few hours of catching-up.

There have been other delights this summer – volunteer dill, stars-and-stripes pie for Independence Day, reading Gaudy Night aloud, brunch at Aventura, the 20th anniversary of Harry Potter coming out, revisiting The Great British Bakeoff, and watching The Tempest in the Arboretum.

This past weekend, family members that I don’t normally get to see were in town. Aunt Judy suggested that some of us see a movie and then get lunch together. “Do you want to go see Sully?” she asked me.

“What’s it about?” All I could think of was Monsters Inc., which didn’t sound like something Aunt Cindy would join Judy in watching.

“Oh, you know. It’s about that pilot who had birds fly into his engines so that he had to make an emergency landing on the Hudson.”

This did not sound promising. How could a feature-length film be made out of an event that presumably took fewer than five minutes? No wonder it was shorter than Florence Foster Jenkins and The Light Between Oceans. I decided to join my aunts, if only so they wouldn’t have to wait 20-40 minutes for me to finish watching a longer movie.

…so to begin with, you can tell that I either didn’t hear, or forgot, that the events of this movie actually happened my last year of undergrad. My roommate pointed out – after asking what rock I’d been under so as to miss this when it went down in 2009 – that deplaning takes several hours when the Coast Guard and police dive teams get involved.

More than that, when you’re the captain responsible, the moments feel like hours. Sully captures both the worst-case scenario – both engines out, a plane dead in the air, everyone having to utilize the exit doors, inflatable raft, and life preservers after ignoring the attendants’ safety lecture – and the best-case scenario: every single person getting off the plane intact, being taken to shore, and receiving medical attention if needed.

Also depicted:

– the people on the flight. A wheelchair-bound grandma, picking a snow globe from the gift shop for her granddaughter. An older man, his son, and the son’s friend, all of whom are desperate to get on the flight for a long-awaited golfing trip. A woman and her baby girl, sitting beside a solicitous gentleman. People who are sleeping, people who look sick, people who are excited.

– what might have been. Captain Suhlenberger, Sully for short, has episodes of imagining how it could have gone if he’d turned this way or that. He envisions distressing New York anew by crashing into another skyscraper – especially poignant to watch this past weekend.

– the real-world fallout. Did he make the right choice? Sully wonders throughout. The world hails his water landing as miraculous, while the airline and its insurance agents question whether he might have made it safely back to the runway at La Guardia, plane intact. Algorithms in plenty, as well as pilots put through a simulation, seem to indicate that he could have, and thus should have, made that turn. What, then, becomes of his career? Of his 40 years of flight? This last aspect gripped me the most, as it is entirely possible for someone to put forth the most profound effort, to remarkable results, and still be fired or vilified for it.

Despite my expectation that Sully might be an hour and a half of boredom, I was profoundly moved by its depiction of reality. Theatres are glutted with superhero movies, stuffed with explosions, full of sound and fury and signifying little.

Talking of: if you watch only one Tom Hanks movie this year, please don’t let it be Inferno.

It was good to see the collateral damage kept to a minimum for once.

It was better to see the air traffic controllers, the Coast Guard, the police divers, and other emergency response teams assemble for their work of helping, rescuing, and fixing. In a world full of accidents and mechanical failure and wicked designs, we need the reminder that such men and women are bound to serve when everything goes to hell.

It was best to see Sully taking the fate of 155 souls as seriously as a pilot ought, keeping them all as safe as possible.

Earlier today, the pastor of my parents’ church asked Facebook, “What’s the best thing your father taught you?”

I found that I was hard-pressed to give one solitary item, since my dad has taught me so much: in words, by his example, and by virtue of what he emphasized in day-to-day life. He catechized me well, taught me the principles of being a good student, and gave lots of other pieces of practical advice:

Ask interesting questions!

Call the city when you see a water main break.

Use a tape measure beforehand to be sure the furniture/ item will fit.

Learn how to type (this one not by example, but by making each of us kids practice 5 minutes with FastType for every 20 minutes of computer games).

There’s no such thing as a garment with too many pockets (this by the example of having our mother add a second breast pocket to several of his shirts). There’s also no such thing as too many flashlights.

Try to buy American when you can.

Wear shoes in places like the garage or the basement, where there might be nails or live wires afoot.

“Don’t watch the ads, children.” Also: look away from violent TV shows. Don’t put the television in the middle of family life; if you must have one, keep it in the basement.

Honor the cook by being seated when he/she brings the food. Clearly address someone by name when you want him/her to pass you food. “When you have eaten and are satisfied, return thanks to the Lord for the good land he has given you.”

“Is there a way to graduate early?”

“If you borrow a woodsman’s axe, you are borrowing his livelihood. If you borrow my pen, you’re borrowing my livelihood. So make sure to return the pen to my hand, where you got it.” The same goes for his Swiss army knife.

“What have you learned from this?” Usually asked at the very moment we realized that a bad situation was at least partly our own fault.

“When you leave a house, wish God’s peace upon it.”

I’ve recently come to appreciate that it isn’t always the case that a man with three sons and one daughter treat them alike in dignity. From the time I was young, Dad told me that I could be at the top of the class or be the “head of the company.” Thus Dad taught me that, though I am different from my brothers, neither my thoughts nor my person are worth less than they are.

He taught me that memorization of Scripture is important; invoices are also important; writing the date on things is useful; the items you own require maintenance; the items you buy represent a certain amount of time invested to earn the money so be sure it’s worth it; and that strawberries demonstrate that our God loves making beautiful things.

Typically when my sister muses leave me alone in the club too long, I start talking to myself and tend toward the confessional. That might yet happen this week, but first: yesterday’s festival of dill.

It could be said that this all really started back in May, when my housemates and I decided to have a somewhat formal tea. We prepared a couple different pots of tea, dairy-free coconut scones, and cucumber sandwiches in plenty. Thus my purchase of, and introduction to, fresh dill. Prior to that, I’d only encountered dill as in a mirror, darkly: dried and faded and sprinkled on salmon. The fresh bundle was luxuriantly green and terribly fragrant in comparison.

Somehow yesterday demanded a reprise of that redolence, a reappearance of those feathery fronds. It is like having both delicate seaweed and a weeping willow inside one’s kitchen.

The first order of business was to mix some chopped dill into a bit of butter and a bit of cream cheese for English muffin purposes. That done, I decided to infuse a bit of gin with a few stems.

Then the requisite refrigerator pickles: some are garlicky, some are a little peppery, all of them are dilly. After that, I still wanted to make something, but wasn’t quite up for baked salmon, borsht, or mizeria. Since the dill in the gin had only begun macerating…I grabbed a bit more dill, a bit more gin, and muddled them together. In went some lime juice and some liqueurs: honey, vanilla, ginger, and Chartreuse. The result was a bit like drinking in a sunlight field entire. It struck me as fitting; generally, smelling dill is like breathing in a forest and a field and the sea all at once.

One of the abiding questions of my life is “Am I grown up yet?” Not because I’m Susan Pevensie and super-eager to be An Adult, but because years have rushed by, and I don’t exactly have the best vantage for seeing how they’ve changed me. Am I really any different from myself at age 14? Surely I’m not old enough or mature enough to care about, say, insurance premiums or local construction projects?

Presumably certain people who are not me can point to their spouse, their children, or their 30-year-mortgage and stop feeling angst about this kind of thing. Some of them act like nothing you do in your life counts until you’re married with progeny. Maybe it’s unintentional, but it seeps through their words anyway, like one can’t really live without somehow being bound to or responsible for another person’s life.

This is false, of course; we’re not all stuck in a tower waiting for life to begin. But the married folks sure have that clear milestone set in their past. The rest of us pass the seemingly-arbitrary government mile markers at 18 and 21, and then go “Um. Okay? I guess I’m in Adultland now?” We wonder “What am I doing with my life?” as well as “What should I do with my life?” And after such worries trails the dark shadow of fear, that one day we’ll sit somewhere, old and enfeebled, wondering “What have I done with my life?”

Such worries can serve as the catalyst to change, but they’re not helpful otherwise. So I was pleased to come across a different approach from Erikaandothers: taking a look at the experiences one has already had, or the goals one has already accomplished, praising God for them, and carrying on with a little bit more perspective. Erika also shared her thoughts on how this isn’t a brag list.

Here are some things I’ve already done. They may not make me an Official Adult, but they’ve all contributed to who I am. What’s on your reverse bucket list?

Shot a rifle
Saw an opera
Sang karaoke
Wrote a story
Went hunting
Learned to ski
Went canoeing
Went rappelling
Visited 32 states
Went ice skating
Marathoned LotR
Pulled all-nighters
Visited the Louvre
Enjoyed formal tea
Owned a dollhouse
Took a singing class
Rode a roller coaster
Went four-wheeling
Ran several 5K races
Went horseback riding
Took an overnight train
Visited the Eiffel Tower
Saw Billy Joel in concert
Got and held a job 5 years
Cooked a Martinmas goose
Saw Alcazar and Alhambra
Performed in plays/musicals
Attended a Steampunk Expo
Saw the Golden Gate Bridge
Sang solos in front of people
Learned to play the bagpipes
Walked the Mackinac Bridge
Touched the LeFay Fragment
Rode a bike on Mackinac Island
Went to (Motor City) Comic Con
Lived in an apartment on my own
Was a bridesmaid (five times now)
Was broadcast singing on the radio
Visited Portugal, Spain, and France
Went on a mission trip to Nicaragua
Painted and framed some watercolors
Climbed Laughing Whitefish 5+ times
Saw Devil’s Tower and Mt. Rushmore
Memorized some really lengthy poems
Graduated high school as valedictorian
Traveled to Yellowstone National Park
Learned how to do a fling and sword dance
Graduated from Hillsdale magna cum laude
Rocked some standardized tests like a champ
Swam in the Atlantic, dunked toes in the Pacific
Drove to Virginia, Ohio, and Wisconsin by myself
Learned about cocktails and designed several of my own
Made my own ginger beer, sushi, crepes, ricotta, grenadine
Joined a group blog and posted for more than three years on it
Traveled to Rome; ate gelato, drank cappuccino, saw sights, etc.
Swam in Lake Michigan, dunked toes in Lake Superior and Huron
Created a youTube profile and started making videos (really badly)
Was VPR and Fraternity Education director for my music fraternity
Visited locations from movies (namely, Harry Potter; possibly others)
Saw Coriolanus, and Shakespeare in the Arb, and other live Shakespeare
Attended a major league baseball game (with a squirrel on the field. Can’t be beat)
Was an Intercollegiate Studies Institute Honors Fellow, and visited Cambridge, England
Visited St. Jeronimo’s in Lisbon, the Cathedral of Seville, Notre Dame, Ely Cathedral, and the basilicas of Rome
Was one of four students picked to go on CS Lewis trip to Oxford and Cambridge; met Walter Hooper, Jack’s last pupil, and Dr. Michael Ward (before Planet Narnia was published)~~~
As Hyoi told Ransom in Out of the Silent Planet:

“A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered. You are speaking, Hmãn, as if the pleasure were one thing and the memory another. It is all one thing. What you call remembering is the last part of the pleasure, as the crah is the last part of the poem. When you and I met, the meeting was over very shortly, it was nothing. Now it is growing something as we remember it. But still we know very little about it. What it will be when I remember it as I lie down to die, what it makes me all my days till then – that is the real meeting. The other is only the beginning of it.”

I took a different road to choir the other night, since rehearsal was on north campus instead of our usual room in Palmer Commons. Huron River Drive took me through the woods, around the river, away from all the shoppers and students and sidewalks of my normal route down Washtenaw Avenue. The windows were down, the air gently breezy and free from summer’s mugginess. Not too hot, not too cold, no bugs, as my uncle always describes a perfect day.

Zipping about with Carbon Leaf blaring filled me with a quietly piercing sort of contentment, the music underscoring the freedom and possibility inherent in the spring. It all struck me as so appropriate: the alternately intense and mellow music, the car, the weather, the drive. I felt the right age, for once. Not too old to discover new things, not too young to do something of consequence.

The delight spreads out like a vapor to fill the heart it’s in, leaving me ready to face the formidable, ready to rejoice.

*

I took a different road to work yesterday morning, since Ruby was due for her three-month checkup and my father graciously allowed me the use of his vehicle once more. I-96, my typical freeway from Detroit to Plymouth, has been ripped up for replacement, and traffic has been shunted to the parallel roads. So I headed down Fenkell, which was livelier than I’ve seen it quite some time, trying to hit the green lights as ZZ Top sang about cheap sunglasses on 94.7.

I had already forgotten, for the most part, what it’s like to drive a big boat of a Buick: the wide circle of the thin steering wheel, the weight of the car and resulting momentum, the noise of the engine, the raspy speakers. This, too, felt appropriate. Like Fenkell and classic rock and a Buick Century were meant to be together.

The delight rumbles and burns, a Motor City jalopy that keeps on keeping on.

It is a soft, slightly gloomy day out, and no one around here revels in that but me. The morning drizzle has left a few puddles and a cloudy sky behind. All is rather grey, but a gentle breeze blows on the melting snows, much warmer than the winds of weeks past. Walking around outside, I caught a scent of something sweet like pipe smoke. Some ice still lingers, but stepping on it splinters and crushes it into slush.

This is some of my favorite weather, I think; it is above all calm and quiet. No beams of sunlight stab the eyes or glare off virgin snow. It’s not quite warm enough or green enough to register as spring, and so it most resembles October: the month of gallivanting through the woods or by lakes and streams.

Thus there is a northernness about it: a lie, because I am no further north than I was yesterday, but a claim made by right; the rain has reminded the streets and trees and air of the world beyond these buildings and this town, and issued its muted invitation to go forth and explore it.

I don’t often reblog other articles, nor do I tend to share quick picks from the internet at large. But some of these things are worthy of discussion, and I wanted to share them with you to provide an opportunity for that discussion. So here goes:

6 Ways to Love Single Women in Your Church
On one hand, I’m leery of being That Single Person Who Is Always Lamenting Her Singleness. On the other hand…these are all good ideas, practical ways of being charitable, and Lindsey has written them in a charitable way. I’ve been blessed with a loving and giving and supportive family, friends who ask, married friends who invite. But that doesn’t always take away the loneliness – especially as more and more of my friends get engaged and the circle of comrades-in-singleness shrinks. Do you think there’s anything she missed?

Why Miscarriage Matters When You’re Pro-Life
On the other side of the marriage fence, there’s the opportunity to bear new life, but it doesn’t always turn out as planned. I have at least six friends who have suffered miscarriages, some of them more than once, and it’s…well. It hurts. It’s hard to talk about, because what do you say? Death has made its way into the sphere where we expected life. I can’t imagine it. However, I’ve learned from those friends that the loss is real, the grief is real, and the care we take in discussing it also should be real.

Prayers
Sometimes I ask the denizens of Facebook their thoughts or preferences or whatnot. Yesterday I asked them about their favorite prayers, and got all manner of fascinating responses! Some tend toward the short and simple: Lord, have mercy. Jesus, I trust in you. I believe; help my unbelief! Others go for the beauty of traditional prayers, like this one by Ephrem the Syrian: O Lord and Master of my life, give me not the spirit of sloth, meddling, lust for power and idle talk. But grant unto me, Thy servant, a spirit of chastity (integrity), humility, patience and love. Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see mine own faults and not to judge my brother. For blessed art Thou unto the ages of ages. Amen.Expect to see more mention of prayer throughout Lent. What do you pray for the most?

On a lighter note…
Between the drink menu at Zola Bistro, where I spent an evening with my housemates last week, and this fun map quiz, I have whiled away some pleasant times! Make a note of which drinks you’d like, should you ever come to call, and let me know how you fare should you join me in quiz-taking.

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"We are much too much inclined in these days to divide people into permanent categories, forgetting that a category only exists for its special purpose and must be forgotten as soon as that purpose is served."
~Dorothy Sayers, Are Women Human? Astute and Witty Essays on the Role of Women in Society